Over the years, digital video content has gained increasing popularity with consumers. With the ever-growing amount of audio and video content available to consumers through broadcast, cable, on-demand, fixed media, and other available sources of multimedia content, consumers have easy access to a vast amount of content and programming. Furthermore, many devices (e.g., PCs, DVD recorders) and services that are readily available allow consumers to record, time-shift or view on-demand video and audio content. Furthermore, an increasing amount of video content is becoming available over the Internet and other data services in the form of downloadable content such as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) delivered video services.
Many off-the-shelf video editing applications provide users with the capability to incorporate special effects into captured images, audio and video. Generally, video content can be stored in any number of common formats such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, or DV (digital video), for example. The availability of multimedia content in a vast array of digital formats has facilitated distribution of multimedia content because of the high degree of portability. However, one perceived shortcoming with conventional approaches to video editing is that these applications do not provide support for the same video recorded across different encoding formats or even for videos that vary slightly in content. For example, a consumer might incorporate special effects into a movie on a DVD and might want to view the same special effects on a special edition of the same DVD where additional scenes are included. As another example, a consumer might incorporate special effects into a movie recorded on a VCD (video CD) and might want to incorporate the same special effects into the same movie recorded on a DVD. Consumers are limited to incorporating special effects into a particular video (or copies of the same video). As such, special effects created for one video cannot readily be imported into a video encoded in a different format. Therefore, a need exists in the industry to address these deficiencies and inadequacies.